>The Freakin’ Road

UPDATE: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazettereports that Guy Pearce has also joined the cast. The Road is tentatively schedule to begin shooting in Southwestern Pennsylvania in late February.

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According to Variety, Charlize Theron is joining Viggo Mortenson for the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s contemporary classic The Road. Theron will be playing Mortenson’s wife (the characters in the novel don’t have names, they’re just referred to as “father” and “son”), a relatively minor part mostly played in flashback due to the work’s intense focus on the father/son dynamic.

The Road is being directed by John Hillcoat, the Australian director behind 2005’s The Proposition, a dark western in much the same vein as McCarthy’s earlier works. Also fitting for the production is playwright Joe Penhall adapting the work for screen.

The film was originally slated for production this month, but has now been pushed back a month. The Road is still expected to premiere before the end of the year, though.

Maybe that’s old news, but Viggo Mortensen as the dad in this? That could not be more perfect than if I had cast him myself! Don’t know what part Guy Pearce will play, maybe a cannibal or something, but I don’t really care. Viggo will own that role.

Viggo is the man. Did you see Eastern Promises? He was ridiculously good in that movie. In fact, I’d have to say that was one of my favorite movies of the year; the nude fight scene he did was probably only topped (and out-disturbed) by the one in Borat. I also really loved that movie The Proposition, which was directed by the guy who is directing The Road. Look, if this story is treated anywhere near as perfectly as the Coens did with No Country For Old Men, then my head will probably explode. After this 1-2 punch, though, I hope they don’t try and make a movie out of Blood Meridian. I just don’t see how that could fly.

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3 thoughts on “>The Freakin’ Road”

>Eastern Promises was awesome. I got it from Netflix, and I had to watch it twice and watch all the special features before I could return it. I loved the story Viggo told in the special features about sitting in a restaurant in London and freaking out the Russians at the next table with his gangster tattoos. Do you think if I got stars on my knees they would find out and kill me?

>I saw it at the theater, so I don’t know anything about the special features. However, with the tribal tattoo thing being so 2001, I could see the youth of America embracing the stars on the knees. Wouldn’t that piss those wacky Russian mafia types off?

>The Russian mafia would have a lot of people to kill, in that case. If you don’t deserve the stars, you’re dead. Well, in the DVD features, Viggo talked about getting deep into his character. He lived in Yekaterinburg in the Urals for a month to pick up the mannerisms of local gangsters. His tattoos were temporary, but apparently pretty indestructible, so he wore them around London in his free time away from the set. One night, a Russian couple at the next table spotted the ones on his hands (every one had some kind of symbolism, and these ones meant something pretty awful), stopped talking, and acted pretty scared of him. They didn’t recognize him at all.